A study coauthored by Taiwanese economist Lin Ming-jen (林明仁) that examines long-term care needs and women in the workplace has won this year’s APEC Healthy Women, Healthy Economies Research Prize.
The winner was announced during a virtual Women and the Economy Forum on Friday last week.
The study, titled “How Much Do Long-Term Care Needs Affect Female Labor Supply?”, has yet to be formally published, Lin told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Science and Technology
The researchers used regression analysis and event study methods to analyze government data from 2008 to 2019 on taxes, labor insurance, disability insurance and foreign caregiver applications, he said.
Married daughters are 15 percent less likely to participate in the labor market than married sons when parents have long-term care needs, Lin said.
Daughters, not sons, are typically the major caregivers for sick or aging parents, he said, adding that this is the perpetuation of a common stereotype in Asian countries, where men are thought to be superior to women.
To care for a sick parent, many women leave the workplace or choose a less challenging job, and they usually have difficulty returning to the workplace, even after the parent dies and their caregiving responsibilities are finished, Lin said.
Men and women aged 25 to 30 have similar workforce participation rates, but the gap widens after age 30, the research showed.
The study was commissioned in late 2019 by the Executive Yuan’s Department of Gender Equality, Lin said, expressing the hope that it would lead to an evidence-based evaluation of labor policy in Taiwan.
In January last year, Lin left his post as a professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Economics to begin a three-year term as director-general of the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The study’s other authors were Lin’s students. Chen Kuan-ming (陳冠銘) is a post-doctoral fellow at the US’ National Bureau of Economic Research and Hsiang Chen-wei (項振緯) is a doctoral student at University College London.
“Unpaid care work, which disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders, is vital for societies to function,” Renee Graham, chair of APEC’s Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy, said in the news release announcing the winning study yesterday.
“If we are to build back better and build back more inclusively, we must find ways to support the women who perform the majority of this labor — often without recognition or full appreciation for the important work they are doing,” she said.
The research prize winner was awarded US$20,000, while the two runners-up — from China and Singapore — received US$5,000 each, APEC said.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS